Hereditary

Hereditary is a bone chilling film exploring unknown horrors. Writer and director Ari Aster manages to fill the audience with fear from the simple sound of the click of a tongue. The signature sound from young Charlie (Milly Shapiro) , the youngest child of Annie (Toni Collete) , and Steve Graham (Gabriel Byrne) . “Hereditary” is filled with the unknown, most of the characters have no idea what to believe and whether they can believe their senses. Peter (Alex Wolff), hears the clicking of Charlies tongue in the corner of his room and doesn’t know if he is going crazy, or if the chaos around him is to be believed.

After Annie’s mother dies, a woman who mostly kept to herself, and who Annie in most ways did not really care for; chaos ensues. Tragedy strikes and that’s when everything gets fucked up. Supernatural entities begin to surround the family, and the terror is quickly apparent. The most interesting part through all of this; and perhaps what makes everything so believable is Toni Collete’s performance as a the grief stricken mother who will do anything to make her family feel whole again. Collete gives the performance of a lifetime, I pray that the Academy is willing to make a genre exception and give her the Oscar nod she deserves. I can still hear the screams she let go in my head days after seeing the film.

One huge surprise was the young Alex Wolff who I believe acted his ass off, from pure shock, to panic attacks, rapid sobbing, and absolute terror, I never questioned his portrayal in each and every scene. Aster really asked a lot of each of his actors through every step and the entire cast really stepped up to the plate. The best thing about “Hereditary” is that in no way does it reinvent the horror genre, but instead cleans it up a bit and makes it nice to look at for the first time in a while. If you consider yourself a horror fan in the slightest I cannot give this film higher praise, indie studio A24 continues to produce out of this world, next level content that I believe is among the best in the industry.